Fall Class Schedule

It’s almost done. I’ve got the following classes lined up for fall (am just now confimring the dates). We’ll post asap. Thanks for your patience.

We’ll be offering:

New! MLA Research Paper: This class will teach your high schoolers how to write a 5-7 page, MLA format based argumentative paper using a version of the notecard system.

Expository Essay (5 paragraph)

Kidswrite Basic

Kidswrite Intermediate

Just So Stories: Kids learn to write stories that use Kipling’s literary elements.

Copywork/Dictation: Especially suited to families with kids who struggle with language arts. Revolutionary class!

Nature Journaling

Hand Holders: For moms wanting the extra support/accountability.

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Losing Control

Losing Control

Letting go of control feels like not caring. Part of what motivates you to control your kids is the deep heartfelt love you have for their well-being. You care, therefore you control.

The experience of being controlled, however, feels 180 degrees opposite. When someone controls you, you don’t feel loved. You feel invisible. You feel discounted. You feel used or abused or undermined. The primary feeling is that you must escape control to get back to feeling like yourself again.

The danger of being a strong-willed mother is that you mistakenly convey love through control leaving your child paradoxically feeling unloved! It’s an awful conundrum and one that no mother intentionally creates in her child. If you find it hard to believe that this is your child’s experience, flip it around for a second. Don’t you feel unloved when you perceive your child to be strong-willed? When he or she resists forcibly the great meal you made, or the lesson you prepared, isn’t there a little twinge of rejection you experience?

Yet the desire to manage the external world competes with our hunger to meet the needs of our child’s interior life. How do we do that? How do we manage what our kids “do” while attending to their emotional well-being? So often it feels like you can only do one or the other.

I submit to you that there is a third way.

The idea in a family is that everyone can be their best selves when they are at home. It means they can let their hair down, be exactly who they are and still be loved. It also means that no one person gets to have the say-so over all other members. Families are cooperatives with wiser more experienced people in charge and younger, less experienced people learning the ropes. The idea isn’t to run a dictatorship (I’ve never, for a “New York minute,” bought the whole “this is a benevolent dictatorship” – really, who wants THAT?!). The idea is to set up a context where wiser, mature people can be resources to the less experienced, more emotionally volatile wunderkind (your kiddos!).

The third way puts relationship ahead of achievement. The idea is to create a context where conversation (communication) and negotiation enable all parties to participate at the level they are best able. So let’s cut to the chase. How does that look in homeschool?

One of the biggest mistakes we make as mothers is to assume that our kids know what is going on in our heads. We tend to share conclusions with them, rather than the process. So for instance, you may spend hours diligently debating a particular philosophy of math instruction online with your homeschool buddies. You may research the materials and shop around and peruse the books at a friend’s house. Then one day, decision made, you buy it and schedule the lessons. Your child looks at the cover, thinks it looks “boring” (code for: I’m unrelated to this book choice and feel put upon) and you feel devastated. After all, you just know this is the right program and you are certain once he gets into it, he’s going to love it. It fits him so well! If only he could see!

Now the stage is set for classic power grabs.

The mom feels cheated of the thrill of seeing this curriculum work (after all her labor to finally pick it and pay for it) and the student feels run over (he liked his old book well enough, he thinks this one is ugly and he doesn’t feel like learning how to do a new system – or whatever his reasons are!). Tears and/or punishment follow.

In the third way model, the choices about math books would be aired. Even with young kids (first and second graders), you can have conversations that let them hear what you are thinking. You don’t need to have a big talk every time you want to make a decision. On the other hand, simply narrating the process you’re in so that they can overhear it or participate in it goes a long way toward easing these kinds of tensions. Perhaps as you collect up the math book, you might say, “You know, I was reading about this other kind of math book today on the homeschool board. It’s called _______. And it reminded me of you because….. I’m thinking of purchasing it, to look it over. Would you be interested in looking at it with me online and then deciding if we want to try it?”

Kids love to be involved in decision-making, they love having their viewpoint valued. So much can be achieved through a little open discussion. You have to be prepared for, “Yeah, Mom, that looks awful to me.” But think about that. If that is really true, wouldn’t you rather know that before you plunked down your cold cash and then felt obligated to drag your child through the mud of unhappy math work?

With writing, the same principles need to apply. In Brave Writer, we give editorial control to the writer. As moms, we act as sources of input. We share what we see, love, want more of. We tell our kids what they do right and we point out areas for growth. We leave final decisions in the hands of the kids. We give up control (an illusion anyway since we didn’t write the papers) and allow for our voices to participate in the process rather than to control it. A strange thing happens when you “lose control” and validate the competence of your kids to make wise decisions (within the protected space of your love, input and oversight): trust. Your kids come to trust you… when you trust them to be truthful with you, when you honor their truth with support and kindness.

When a child says, “I hate this. This is too hard” trust is built when your response is, “I hate that you are having that experience. I want you to not feel that you are working too hard. Let’s see how we can solve this problem.” Trust is undermined when you say, “It’s not too hard. You can do it. You just don’t want to because you would rather watch TV.”

What is striking is that moms who give up control yet sustain relationship (through communication), have more power to ask for what they need from their kids. They can say what they need too! “I’m your mom and I feel responsible for your education. I want you to be happy in it too. How can we work together so that you don’t feel tortured by ________ but so that I’m reassured that you are learning too? I am willing to put things on hold until we can solve it.”

The happiest homes are not those where Mom gives up what she needs so that the kids don’t feel any pain. They aren’t the homes where it’s Mom’s way or the highway. The safest places to live are those homes where each person has a right to their feelings and needs (including mom, including kids) and together, they talk about how to meet those needs and feelings in a loving, non-judgmental, creative way. It’s not really losing control, actually. It’s ceding the right to power in service of love.

The Homeschool Alliance

Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, General, Homeschool Advice | 17 Comments »

New post coming; Friday Freewrite

Hi everyone.

I’ve got the new post in drafts, but it’s not finished. July is high season at Brave Writer and I’ve been swamped this week. Thanks for all your feedback both in comments and via email. Our next entry is titled “Losing Control” and I’ll do my best to get it up for you soon.

For now, here’s your Friday Freewrite topic for this week:

Open a book nearby. Turn to page 12. Take the first line of the third paragraph and write it at the top of your page. Read it to yourself and then freewrite. Go!

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Strong Willed Mommies

Strong willed Mommies

Show me a strong-willed child and I’ll show you a strong-willed mother.

After all, who really has the power in the parent-child relationship? The parent can at any moment take away food, toys, privileges and happiness in one fell swoop if he or she likes. All kids can do is throw hissy fits.

When a mother tells me her kids are strong-willed (especially if all her kids happen to be strong-willed), I suspect right away that in fact we’re dealing with a “Strong-Willed Mother.” She’s the one who knows how happy life could be, if only all those little half pints in her charge would shape up, cooperate and do as she says!

By the way, I love these moms. They’re among the most passionate home educators. Let’s take a moment to look at the profile of a strong-willed mommy.

  • They have a clear idea of what ought to be done, in what sequence, to what end, by what due date.
  • They spend energy preparing lessons or lesson plans, or they hone a philosophy without lessons.
  • They hold specific images in their minds of what success is for each child.
  • They are highly responsible (take seriously their duties to provide an education).
  • They feel pressured (by family, social network, even the mysterious “society at large”) to perform at a high level.
  • They usually care about check lists and completing assignments, though some are equally committed to crunchy, unschooly parenting tactics.
  • They’re seriously good at defending their point of view (lawyer-esque in their clarity and supporting reasoning).
  • They find it hard to believe that their kids don’t buy into the flawless logic of their brilliant positions!
  • They sincerely believe they are being reasonable in their expectations and have asked nicely, thankyouverymuch.
  • They resent influences that undermine their vision.

These moms present their case for what kids ought to be doing, feeling and thinking, and then expect cooperation. They’re stymied by what appears to be “out of line” thinking and get their feelings hurt when their children exhibit signs of distress or boredom, or when they challenge the reasoning of the stated objective. If this mom has read that getting to sleep before midnight improves a child’s mental acuity in the morning class session, then she finds it irksome if her son insists that midnight is the best time to play Warcraft to be with online friends who live halfway across the globe. Her reasoning is superior and he ought to see that as easily as she saw it.

I hope I don’t sound harsh. Some of her skills are ones I want! There’s a doggedness to her commitment to her goals that is laudable; her lessons that are well-prepared and received usually turn out so fabulously! Strong-willed moms have an enthusiasm for their passionate viewpoints that inspires others to take on their opinions and convictions. The other thing I love about strong-willed moms is their thirst to know more. They do change directions when new and better information is presented clearly and persuasively.

Perhaps the biggest myopia, however,
is that strong-willed moms sometimes project
their strength of will onto their kids (mirroring it back).

So when a child expresses disinterest, rather than really hearing that as an authentic representation of a genuinely valid viewpoint, the strong-willed mom assumes it means the child is being strong-willed (not cooperating) rather than seeing her attempts at enforcement as the evidence that she has the strong-will (unwilling to entertain or accommodate the child’s point of view). See what I mean? Strong-willed essentially means being so committed to your own point of view, opposition is perplexing and leads to conflict. Well, who is unwilling to be flexible? If once you dispense the program you are unwilling to entertain a child’s disinterest in it, the strong will is not his!

When thinking about home education, then, being strong-willed as a parent can be a liability. Home education is guided not by bureaucratic expectations or an impersonal instructor. At its heart, home education is about nurturing relationships. Parents and children are bonded to each other, which means that they are more expressive, more vested, and more likely to tell you when they are suffering than their peer group at school. To successfully navigate the home education relationship means the parent (who has the power by default) must discover how to enter into the mind-life and motivations of the children. Conversation about what works and what doesn’t, trusting a child’s subjective experience, believing a child’s reasoning (based on his or her developmental level) all comprise the parent/teacher, child/student relationship.

Strong willed mommies can use their strength of will effectively if they redirect it. Rather than being so tenacious about curriculum and objectives (and then how to “get your kids to do x, y and z”), give that same level of passionate commitment to understanding how your children experience their home life and studies. When they show distress or boredom or apathy, get interested. If you’ve got tears, you’re done. There’s nothing more to discuss or do that day. It’s gone too far. Regroup later and talk about what your child was feeling/thinking. Focus on your child’s internal experience, not on objectives. Here are some conversation starters.

  • I’ve noticed that you used to get up early and finish your math pages before breakfast. Lately you still aren’t done by noon. What happened, do you think? How can I help you?
  • Are you in pain?
  • Are you bored?
  • Are you nervous about failing?
  • Tell me how it is for you.
  • I’m your mother and I’m responsible for your education, but you matter to me even more. How can we ensure that we stay connected to each other while you also learn what you’re supposed to?
  • What one thing could I do for you today that would relieve this build-up of pressure?
  • If you could change one thing about _________ (math, writing, that report, your text book, this co-op class…), what would it be?
  • What is worrying you today?
  • If you could learn anything you want (money were no problem, time was free), what would it be and why?
  • I’m sorry for pushing so hard.
  • I’m sorry for not hearing you sooner.
  • I’m sorry you got frustrated to the point of tears. Have a brownie. (Or, go jump on the trampoline; take a walk; watch a movie.)
  • Do we need to hire a tutor?
  • Do we need to take a break from (math, writing, reading practice, tuba, dance)? How long sounds good to you?
  • Can we work out a deal here? (I need _______ from you, what do you need from me?)
  • Want to get a Coke? Let’s talk.
  • I love you. You matter to me. When you’re ready, please feel free to tell me what’s happening inside you (you can write it or we can go out for an ice cream). I promise to listen and not try to get you to change how you feel.

Having a strong vision for how to teach and what to cover is a strength worth cultivating. Holding it in an open hand when dealing with children who don’t have your vision, who are practical (not abstract), who feel different pressures than you feel is essential to preserving the relationship. Close relationships foster learning. Happiness is the context for achievement. Joy is the best teacher.

Reach out to the frustrated child today and see how it goes. Don’t solve problems. Try to simply describe them in detail and be aware of how your child sees the world.

Partnership Writing

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Posted in Brave Writer Philosophy, General, Homeschool Advice | 21 Comments »

At the beach!

I keep hoping to write a blog entry, but my nieces and nephew keep climbing on me, wanting to do Photo Booth on my Mac. 🙂 Have to play in the sun, swim in the Pacific ocean off of Catalina’s coast and eat steak off the BBQ. Sorry! It’s a hard life.

See you as soon as I can rub two minutes together for writing.

In the meantime, check out the class listings. The Custom Writing Program class begins on Monday as does the Movie Discussion class. Sign up now before it’s too late!

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